


Endless Red Sands

by greygerbil



Category: Original Work
Genre: Friends With Benefits To Lovers, Human/Hornet Hybrid, M/M, Science Fiction, Size Difference, Xeno Biology with Intersex Genitalia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:08:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25507993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greygerbil/pseuds/greygerbil
Summary: Needle feels like he almost fits in on a place like Dosojin Station and in jovial Sharpe, he has an admirer who more than doesn't mind the quirks of his genetically modified human-hornet hybrid body. However, even for members of the Defence Force, peace only comes hard-fought on one of the Milky Way's most notorious stopovers.
Relationships: Man With an Insect Fetish/Insecure Insect Man, Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 7
Kudos: 55
Collections: Rare Male Slash Exchange 2020





	Endless Red Sands

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OneEntireBee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneEntireBee/gifts).



The Terra Luna Alliance ships rose into the darkening sky from the central spaceport hangar like a swarm of silver fish in the water, their sleek, polished bodies whisking through the blue. Needle watched them move in perfect formation, then hanging still in the air for a moment before some unheard command had them all accelerate through the atmosphere and put them out of view in the blink of an eye.

“Do we get nice ships like that often?”

Morawski, the latest recruit of the Dosojin Station Defence Forces, spoke to Needle’s colleague, Dan Sharpe. Morawski was perhaps nineteen, a bag of lanky bones, and hadn’t dared to address Needle yet, even though it was his gaze to the sky he had followed.

“We’re at the node of six sectors,” Sharpe said, shrugging his broad shoulders. “I figure the official military types would like to land somewhere more reputable, but this is the best place they get. Anyway, our boss Jackson and the governor are pretty tough on the real bad shit. Garden-variety goods smugglers might get ignored, probably a few fixers slip by as well, but we’ve put our fair share of slavers and pirates behind bars, haven’t we, Needle?”

Needle gave a curt nod. Morawksi looked at Needle out of the corner of his eyes again, awed and fearful at once. Needle fixed him with an exasperated gaze, though he knew that the fact that his human-shaped eyes, just a tad too large, were all black with no white, and that the three small ocelli on his forehead would turn to look as well might scare Morawski more.

 _Better this way._ If Morawski ran crying back to base because he’d seen an Experimental, he’d never make it defending the people of one of the Milky Way’s most notorious space stations.

Even here, of course, Needle was still something of a sight, if not nearly the most dangerous thing around. Experimentals, who were the offspring of hybrid animal-human creatures made in a lab some two hundred years ago, were rare. Half the strains had died out with their potential progenitors, but the rest remained as fearful as their forebears, as it turned out that the hybridism always won against normal human genes.

Needle had never cared to look up who the first in his line had been, though he figured the information would be in some old Terra police file detailing the activities of the illegal military research facility. It didn’t matter, though. Everyone could tell at a glance that the secret ingredient to his DNA string was hornet. Apart from his eyes, his skin and hair, obsidian black with a reddish tint, would give it away as surely as the antenna on his head, the transparent wings poking out of holes cut in the back of his bulletproof west, or the fact that he had the figure of a long-limbed, sinewy human male that was suddenly dramatically cinched under the ribcage as if he’d tortured his body with a corset for years and years. When biology had tackled the task of combining the human face with mandibles, it had failed, but left Needle with a mouth full of sharp fangs instead. That he stood at just above seven feet probably had something to do with it as well and also didn’t help people with not pissing their pants when they looked at him. 

Despite his nickname, he did not have a sting, though. That came from the fifteen inch serrated knife he wore at the hip to make up for the lack.

“Enough sightseeing,” Needle decided. “It’s time for you to get back to central, Morawski. Mbuende is waiting to show you the bowels of the spaceport until the end of your shift.”

“And she’s not as nice as we are,” Sharpe added and laughed. “At least not if you manage to make her angry. So keep your mouth shut and listen, alright, kid?”

“Got it,” Morawski said, eagerly nodding his head.

Sharpe and Needle watched him plod off through the busy crowd that always accumulated before the stores at the port, spaceship crews lugging crates of packed rations, supply managers darting from stall to stall to find wares, and visitors pouring out of customs.

“What do you think?” Sharpe asked.

“Give it two weeks and he runs back to whatever farmstead colony he came from,” Needle said with a snort. “If his parents haven’t dragged him back by the ear by then.”

Sharpe grinned. “You’re so pessimistic. I think he can do it. I need to keep him away from you, though. The way he was staring, I think I’m soon going to have competition.”

Needle shook his head at Sharpe. “He was watching the horror show.”

“Pessimist, as I said. He might have been stunned into silence by your good looks.”

Sharpe grinned wider. He was a handsome man, shorter than most men, but broad all over with muscle. Tattoos of wildly varying quality covered the freckled skin of his arms and neck and much more under the uniform. The fact that he could have had his pick of normal humans always made Needle question his interest, even though they’d fucked dozens of times by this point.

There was a fetish for anything, he supposed.

“Okay, keep it in your pants, Sharpe. Patrol isn’t over.”

“Right, right. Let’s head over to Yamauchi’s speeder shop.”

Needle nodded his head, turning away from the bridge that allowed free view of the spaceport and towards the winding way that led to the edge of the walled-in town.

Dosojin Station had been an ambitious project of a now-defunct alliance between some old Terra powers many years ago now. A large asteroid had been made stationary in orbit of a gas giant and terraformed for human life. It was about the size of the American continent back on Terra, but most parts of it were covered by a desert inhabited only by sharp-fanged creatures and cacti – the terraforming had not quite worked out as planned. However, what people called Dosojin Station wasn’t the red sand that stretched to the horizons, it was the spaceport that provided rest, wares and fuel for six of the Milky Way’s busiest interplanetary districts. Around it stretched a sprawling city of metal buildings in which lived settlers who withstood the sandstorms as well as the occasional pirate and mercenary raids that Sharpe, Needle and their colleagues in the Dosojin Station Defence Force shut down.

Most days, however, Lieutenant Mbuende and her people had the spaceport handled and Sharpe and Needle could concentrate on patrolling the city, making sure the constant stream of guests on shore leave weren’t causing the locals too much trouble, chasing clueless strangers inside when the sandstorms were coming, and keeping the ferocious wildlife at bay.

“Sky looks clear today. You wanna take a look around?” Sharpe asked, as they walked down the dusty road.

“Yes. You go ahead and talk to Yamauchi.”

Needle knocked the tip of his brown boot against the ground and took a few steps away from the nearest crowd of people standing around a small street food vendor before he let his wings flutter.

When he kicked off, hot wind rushed into his face. The buildings here were mostly squat and sturdy and the highest six or seven stories; anything bigger might get knocked over in the sandstorms. He hovered above them for a moment before he threw himself into the warm gusts.

The sands crept in on the Dosojin Station every minute of every day and with it came the creatures that bested it. They could chew rock and claw through metal and had gotten a taste of one too many morons wandering into the dunes in their day, so keeping them away could be crucial for the safety of everyone. Over the years he’d done this job, Needle had gotten pretty damn good at tracking the movement patterns of the packs and predicting when one was about to go fishing for tourists again. However, he always took the time to slow down and take a look at the surrounding landscape and the dome of the sky when he’d left the walls of the port behind him. For how deadly this place was, it sure looked good when the sun sank on the horizon after a short but burning nineteen-hour day, colouring the dunes like burnished bronze and making each scraggly rock formation cast massive shadows like giant monuments to unknown rulers that might have lived here eons before humans arrived.

Shaking off the melancholic fantasies, Needle slowly drifted downwards through the dusty air towards the western gate. Technically, it was not forbidden to wander off into the wastes if you so chose, which meant that the Defence Force couldn’t station guards. However, Yuko Yamauchi, a speeder repair mechanic and lender, was the one people usually went to when they wanted to go on such an odyssey. She was just crawling out of the engine of a rusty town car that Sharpe was perching on when Needle landed.

“There you are! I was wondering if you’d gotten shot or something. I don’t get Sharpe without Needle often these days.”

“I was just checking on the Rock Eaters. They’re getting close again.”

“Right, I just told Sharpe here I heard them howling last night.” She glanced distractedly at a piece of machinery in her hand, which had melted and then hardened into a barely recognisable pile of metal. “I didn’t send anyone out today, but I’m sure there’s a few who brought their own merchandise and I had some rich kids from the old homeworld shooting me messages that they’re going to want to explore out there in a few days. Seemed too risky for me, I like getting my speeders back in one piece, but you know they’ll find a way. So if you could swipe the area for Rock Eaters, it probably wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

“Is that what young people do now? Go racing in the desert?” Sharpe asked, shaking his head with feigned desperation. “In my day, we just did Red Crystal in the club bathroom.”

Needle rolled his eyes at him as Yamauchi snickered.

“We’ll look into it in the morning,” Needle said.

“Dead rich kids only get us in trouble, too,” Sharpe added, jumping off the side of the car.

“Great, I appreciate it.”

Yamauchi stuck her head back in the innards of the motor.

Sharpe and Needle turned back down the street. With almost no humidity to trap the warmth, the long nights here grew cold and already a brisk wind was blowing dust under their feet. People were packing in their market stalls, though most of the stores with inside rooms, better protected from the cold, would stay open during the night to service the never-ending stream of customers. Fluorescent lights switched on behind window panes and the cold shine seeped out of open doors. Next to him, Sharpe yawned, stretching his arms over his head. They walked at a leisurely pace. In moments like this, Dosojin Station seemed peaceful.

“Are you doing anything after your shift?” Sharpe asked.

And in moments like these, Needle’s walls were just lowered enough that he shrugged and shook his head.

-

Male hornet drones were not generally very fearful, so it made sense that when building their animal-human compound creatures, the military researchers who had created Needle’s ancestor had made sure to mix in originally female features into the otherwise male build as well to make something a little more intimidating. His impressive size was probably a result of that and it was Needle’s theory that they had wanted the stinger that only the female hornets sported – modified ovipositors, he’d read once –, but in the end hadn’t been able to figure out how to place it on a human body in a way that wasn’t more hindrance than help. Instead, what he’d ended up with was a pussy in addition to his cock, the latter of which was curved and a lot more complex-looking than a regular human one, with ridges and folds and harder patches of skin.

Needle had had a lovers, but felt that they had slept with him despite the copious amounts of strange animal markers, mostly pretending he was just a regular human. Sharpe, on the other hand, still seemed fascinated after all their times in bed together. As Sharpe lazily fingered his pussy, he worked on his cock with the other hand, rubbing his thumb along the ridges.

“You’re lucky,” Needle muttered sardonically, watching him, head lolling to the side, “the real thing comes with claspers to grab on to your partner when you’re inside.”

Grinning, Sharpe dragged his hand down Needle’s cock.

“You think that would deter me? After everything?”

Needle snorted, placing his hand on Sharpe’s red head of hair and pushing it down between his legs.

“I’ll find some way to test that,” he threatened.

Sharpe laughed and swiped his tongue over Needle’s pussy before he sat up, grasping his long thighs.

“Turn around?”

Needle nodded, pretended that a shiver didn’t crawl up his spine when he heard the lust in Sharpe’s voice, saw him look him up and down. It was nice to be wanted, even if Sharpe was a horndog and Needle made endless fun of him for it.

He threw his long leg over Sharpe’s head and moved to lean on his knees and elbows on the mattress, spreading his wings a little so they wouldn’t be in the way, baring his ass to Sharpe, who grabbed the halves of his backside and pulled them apart, massaging the lean muscle. There was shifting, the crinkle of a condom wrapper, and he felt the head of Sharpe’s cock press against the entrance of his pussy, teasing it, while rubbing his thumb over his asshole. Sharpe liked fucking either and Needle certainly didn’t care which one he picked – he just wanted him to get on with something.

“Did you fall asleep back there?” he grumbled.

Instead of an answer, Sharpe snapped his hips forward and seated himself inside Needle. Needle groaned.

Sharpe’s hands rested on the dip of Needle’s waist, holding on tightly. Sometimes they’d laze around in bed for hours, getting each other off as they went, but after a long day Needle preferred a quick, hard fuck to get the thoughts out of his head and let him fall comfortably asleep, and so he spurned Sharpe on, bucking against him.

Sharpe never disappointed here, laying into him as soon as he saw that was what Needle wanted. Needle allowed his head to drop into the pillow. It wasn’t a dignified position, ass in the air like this, but he figured that with his special taste for Needle’s odd form, Sharpe would enjoy the sight. He fucked him deep and fast, greedily pawing at him as he did. Needle reached between his legs, jerking himself off in time with Sharpe pressing into him. He could hear how wet he was just from the slick noise Sharpe’s length produced pounding into him. When Needle came, it was like chain lightning through his nervous system.

As Sharpe continued, Needle closed his legs a little, made himself tighter. He heard Sharpe chuckle breathlessly behind him. His rhythm faltered, grew erratic before he went stiff when he came, then relaxed, sighing as he stroked the points where Needle’s wings were attached to his shoulder blades with his thumbs.

Sharpe pulled out and Needle sat with his back to him, feeling pleasantly open and a little sore. He heard him rustle around, probably dealing with the condom. Needle cleaned himself up with a tissue.

“I didn’t check, are we in the same shift omorrow?” he asked, when his breathing had slowed, laying back on his stomach, arms folded under his head. It was never comfortable to rest on his wings.

“I think so, yeah. Man, I could use a day off.” Sharpe rubbed his shoulder. “Haven’t you been on duty for like 16 standard days in a row now? What did you do to piss Jackson off?”

“I volunteered,” Needle said with a lopsided smirk. “And unlike you, I don’t get on her bad side.”

“You really love your job,” Sharpe muttered, running a hand through his tousled red hair.

“Not all of it. Mostly, though, yeah.”

“How long have you been here again?”

“Six years now.”

“Damn, that’s long for this place.”

Sharpe had only been here closing in on one, but he was right that this wasn’t unusual. A lot of people didn’t stay forever. Dosojin Station was a place to pass through, even for those who lived here.

“I’ll probably stick around,” Needle said.

“What’s keeping you?”

“I like to have a purpose. Besides, it’s a small place. People know me, the ones who stay for a while. They don’t mind me. That’s new.”

And because he was good at what he did with the Defence Force, he didn’t get weird looks from the bar keepers and the shop owners and the spaceport staff anymore. Most probably thought he was weird, but he was their freak, in the end.

“Home, huh?” Sharpe said, almost melancholic, as he leaned against the wall.

“Where’s yours?” Needle asked, glancing up at him.

He’d never prodded before. You didn’t, usually. Many people who ended up living on Dosojin Station for a while had good reasons not to go back.

“Nowhere, really. Family moved around when I was younger, I kept it up when it was just me left. But this place isn’t too bad, you know? I could see staying a while. It also has you, of course.”

“You’d find someone else to fuck on another planet, I think,” Needle said, raising a brow.

“Yeah, but not anyone as sexy as you.” Sharpe grinned widely. “Anyway, I should get going. See you tomorrow to kick Rock Eaters around?”

Needle hesitated. Somehow, he always expected Sharpe would hang around some night, just because how easy it was to talk, how comfortable it felt to be together. He never did, but then, he’d never said he would. It was Needle’s fault for getting a little too attached.

_Maybe if I asked?_

“You can stay if you want to. The night’s cold.”

“Ah, I don’t want to bother you. You know I’d just want to jump you again in the morning.”

And thus, Sharpe clambered out of the bed and Needle tried not to feel the rush of disappointment.

-

“Those are speeder tracks.”

Needle leaned out of the side of their sleek, open-roof hover car to look at what Sharpe had pointed out. There was a blown-out line in the sand, about four feet wide.

“We should follow those. This is a long way out for a tourist.”

“Yeah. Hey, keep it steady for me?”

Needle slowed a little and pulled into first gear to make their flight smooth, craning his neck to look for Sharpe’s targets. Sharpe was the better shot between them. Not that bullets were a great danger to Rock Eaters, but they still hurt the armoured bastards and that usually kept them away for a while. Sharpe took aim and fired another half dozen into the hides of some Rock Eaters watching them from atop a dune, sending them scurrying.

“Nice one,” Needle murmured.

Before Sharpe could reply, there was a sudden sound in the distance – a human voice, shouting wordlessly, perhaps having heard their racket. Needle and Sharpe looked at each other as Needle put the speeder on the highest setting, following the marks in the sand. Yamauchi’s rich kids? They’d be a bit early.

The first thing Needle saw was the red paint of the Defence Force standard vehicle. It sat stranded against a stone spire. Huddled in the shadow of the rock formation was Bakker, a white-bearded, sun-burnt old man, one of the few who’d been on Dosojin Station longer than Needle, and probably longer than most of the buildings, too.

“What the hell are you doing here, Bakker?” he asked, slowing the car.

“Sunbathing! What does it look like?” Bakker grunted in his thick Dutch accent. “Gotta say, Needle, you’re the ugliest motherfucker on this rock, but boy am I glad to see your face.”

“So I take it you don’t need our help?” Sharpe asked, leaning past Needle.

“Did you run your speeder into a rock?” Needle asked, frowning at him.

Bakker pulled himself up by the side of his car. Needle saw that he was shifting the weight off his left foot.

“Fucking Rock Eaters got me off-course. I was supposed to be patrolling north of the city. Gun jammed, I lost control over the car, it’s a mess.”

“Well, you need to get to a medic first before we worry about the speeder,” Needle decided.

“Just leave him,” Sharpe muttered next to him.

Needle had long given up on commenting on every insult thrown his way, but he had to admit he felt a tiny bit of satisfaction seeing the true annoyance on Sharpe’s face.

-

They did not leave Bakker, though, and by the time they had gotten him to a hospital, arranged for the retrieval of his speeder and finished their own rounds as well as checking north where Bakker had abandoned his post, their way back to the western gate was made following the cold white gleam of their hover car’s headlights through the darkness.

“The stars are something here at night,” Sharpe said, looking up at the sky. “It’s too bright in the Station to see them this well.”

“I didn’t take you for a romantic,” Needle said with a quirk to his lips.

“Sometimes, why not! Beside, I’m not the one staring at the sky all the time when he’s hovering above the city,” Sharpe shot back.

Needle just huffed, surprised that Sharpe had paid that much attention to his habits. When Needle was thirty feet above him in the air, he could hardly be looking at his ass, so why did he care? Of course, they had been running the same shifts throughout most of the year. Perhaps it was just something he’d happened to notice.

“Dosojin can be pretty if you know what to look for.”

He’d expected Sharpe to make a joke, considering that the ugly sides definitely outweighed the others, but he just leaned back in his seat, the wind ruffling through his hair as he wiped dust off his gun.

“Yeah, it can be. Didn’t think that when I first came here.”

“What convinced you?”

“Lifers like you and Mbuende, a few of the others, too. Bakker, he’d leave if there were better prospects, but I always figured you two could make it in other places if you really wanted. Too clever to be stuck here. So why didn’t you leave? That’s when I started to keep my eyes open for the good parts.”

“Lifers?” Needle scoffed. “It’s not prison.”

“If you’d ask Bakker, I’m sure he’d disagree.”

“Point taken,” Needle said thoughtfully.

He was just wondering if there was a way to tell Sharpe that he wouldn’t mind him sticking around, that he liked that he could see the positives, when the headlights caught half a dozen shadowy figures only a few steps outside the city walls.

“Time to drive some wanderers inside,” Sharpe murmured.

Needle nodded his head. He’d feel marginally bad recovering their corpses in the morning if he hadn’t at least tried to talk them out of this. They had nothing but flashlights with them, from the looks of it. Even if they didn’t run into Rock Eaters, since they had just been chased off the perimeter, it was easy enough to get lost in the night. Dosojin Station was lit up like a beacon, but nothing else, and people were bad at gauging distances in the pitch black dark and often underestimated how bitter cold the nights could get, especially away from the mass of humming machinery that kept the station running.

He turned the speeder around, putting it in their way, with Sharpe facing them. They had a strategy for moments like this, sending smiling Sharpe ahead, with the monster man only weighing in with a few choice words if friendly diplomacy wasn’t convincing enough. Sharpe leaned over the door of the hover car.

“So, where are you headed to, guys?” he asked.

“Nowhere now. You showed up late, though,” a voice answered.

With a scrambling grasp and a curse, Sharpe reached for his gun, but four people had already grabbed his arms and the front of his uniform and hauled him down onto the ground.

Without a second’s thought, Needle tore the speeder around, gave it a little room to gather speed on the u-turn, and drove it straight into the two men standing in the back. There wasn’t enough punch behind it to send them flying, but having them out of the fight for now was all he’d aimed for, which he seemed to have accomplished, as both tumbled groaning to the ground. Before he jumped out of his speeder, he pressed his finger on the emergency call button under the ignition, sending a silent distress signal out to main station.

The four who’d thrown Sharpe on the ground and under their boots turned their attention to Needle and froze. It didn’t take much to guess they were criminals, considering, but that didn’t necessarily mean that they had ever faced a giant angry hornet man baring a mouth full of fangs and brandishing a knife as long as their forearm. Needle had often used this moment of shock to his surprise. He grabbed one man’s head and slammed it into the side of the speeder.

A gangly woman pulled a gun on him. Needle closed the distance with a jump, blocking her, and a shot went off into the red sand. He bent her arm back, forcing her to drop the weapon. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Sharpe trying to sit, but he was incapacitated with a couple of swift kicks to the stomach.

As Needle wrestled the woman to the ground, a flash of light appeared over his head. He twitched out of the way, but the searing blade still cut across his cheek and jaw. He growled at the fiery pain, throwing himself backwards at the attacker, but unlike the gun the glowing, shivering energy knife didn’t just have one end that was dangerous. It hit him in the thigh and the back before he managed to bring in his own dagger and slash the man’s wrist open. At the same moment, something heavy hit him in the back. This threw him to the ground, but, in the chaotic struggle, also put him on top of the dropped gun the woman had just been reaching for. He grabbed it and turned, fired at the man’s leg just inches from him, hitting him in the knee. That one went down whimpering, but someone else kicked Needle square in the face, leaving his head spinning.

Another gun went off, followed by wild shouting. As Needle struggled to blink himself back to full consciousness, he saw Sharpe on his feet, pointing his gun at the two attackers still standing. Needle heaved himself up, gun in one hand and knife in the other, and dragged himself to his side.

“Nice try, Henry. Surrender,” Sharpe bit out next to him.

In the distance, Needle heard the deep wail of Defence Force sirens.

-

“Who were these people?”

Commanding Officer Eve Jackson, dressed impeccably as usual in a blazer and skirt and perfectly ironed white shirt, her black curls pulled back into a strict ponytail, pinned Sharpe with a dark-eyed gaze.

Sharpe sat in a plastic chair by the side of Needle’s hospital bed. He’d collected his share of bruises and his uniform was torn, but was otherwise unharmed. Needle had taken the brunt of the damage.

“Bonebreaker Gang. Luna. Used to run with them when I was a young, had a falling out, and, well... figured they wouldn’t care enough to chase me down after twelve years, but I was wrong. Apparently, they just waited for me to stop moving around.”

Jackson sighed and shook her head at him. She couldn’t be too surprised – Needle wasn’t. This wasn’t the first time the past had caught up to someone working in the Defence Force here and she’d been fairly lenient when it came to employing people who had gotten in trouble before, something that had given her a small but fiercely loyal host of workers over the years. Still, everyone knew she appreciated a warning if that sort of thing was likely to happen. She told you straight-up in the interview, even.

“You know, I should kick you out for this,” Jackson said. “If we’d been warned there might be people looking for you, Mbuende’s guys could have easily stopped them at the space port. I don’t care about gang drama from light years away, you know that. This was unnecessary!”

“I know, boss,” Sharpe muttered, staring at the dusty tips of his boots. “I just didn’t... oh, fuck, I don’t know, I was embarrassed I was such an idiot. Trust me, anyone with a brain would have known better than to throw in with the Bonebreakers. Even for a gang, they had a bad reputation. If this is it for me here, I get it.”

Jackson sighed. “As I said, it should be,” she said sternly. “But we’ve had you for a while now and you know what you’re doing. Needle likes working with you.” She shot Needle a look and he carefully inclined his sore head in agreement. “The others think you’re passable, too. I’d be shooting myself in the foot. Still, if this is going to happen again, you tell me now, or next time I’ll buy you a ticket off this station myself.” She pointed her thumb at Needle. “You’re not just putting yourself at risk.”

“No, I doubt anyone else is coming. Henry runs the thing and they’re not big fish. This was his grudge,” Sharpe said.

Jackson put her hands on her hips. “It better have been.”

“One more question, boss,” Needle said. “How did they even find us? They must have known our patrol route.”

Jackson wrinkled her nose. “I wondered that, too. Mbuende tells me their ship arrived this afternoon. Apparently, one of her guys actually told them where you were. Morawski, I think? Some rookie we hired a few weeks back. I’m sure she’s currently raking him over the coals. She says she doesn’t think he was in on it, he just seems to be dangerously naive.”

Needle snorted, looking over at Sharpe to exchange a knowing glance with him, but Sharpe was still staring at the ground.

“Right. I think we’ve met him. Thanks, boss.”

“Alright. Is that it? I’m going to deal with the paperwork for these Bonebreakers now, see where we can get them locked up. You both take tomorrow off to get back on your feet. Sharpe, can you get Needle home? Needle, is that okay with you?”

“Yeah, of course,” Sharpe said.

“Sure,” Needle added.

Jackson strode out of the room.

“Bonebreaker Gang,” Needle murmured, after they’d sat in silence for a while, grabbing the lukewarm ice pack next to him again to press against his thrumming skull and stop himself from playing with the stitching on his wounds. “What a shit name.”

“I’m afraid that was chosen before I joined,” Sharpe said with a pale smile. Then, he let his head fall back with a groan. “This was _exactly_ what I didn’t want to happen.”

“It is a surprise they tracked you down if they’re that small. They must have good intel.”

“I’ll bet they just got lucky. That’s not what I’m talking about, though. I didn’t want you in the firing line. Fuck, you’re probably gonna have a big-ass scar all over your face now.”

“Oh no, what about my career as a super model?” Needle answered flatly. “I have other scars.”

“This one’s my fault, alright? Jackson was exactly correct, I should have told her, if not at the start, then later, when I knew I could trust her. I should have told you.” He stopped, glancing at Needle. “Look, I – I’m sure you’ve noticed I’m into you, right? I mean, I’m not gonna pretend I didn’t just want to fuck you at the start, ‘cause you’re hot as hell.” He grinned, though it looked more like a grimace. “But it’s more than that. I didn’t want to make you part of my messed-up life, though.”

Needle felt his heart lurch into his throat. Their relationship status wasn’t something he’d thought to be discussing tonight. They never had before.

“You really think I care that much?” Needle said. “Everybody on Dosojin Station has a story, moron. I could guess you had one, too.”

“ _You_ don’t have one. You’re a decent guy who got screwed over because people don’t like looking at you. That’s not your fault. Why would you wanna be with an idiot small-time criminal who didn’t even start to get his life together until he turned thirty?”

Needle rubbed the back of his neck. Sharpe had a point, though he hardly saw himself as an angel.

“I don’t know about that,” he muttered. “I’m kind of an asshole, that’s a good reason for people not to like me, too.”

Sharpe laughed.

“You know, I love you,” he said conversationally.

Needle stared at him, happy that skin the colour of a hornet’s carapace could produce no visible blush.

“And thank you for saving my life, since we’re at it.”

“Would be boring around here without you,” Needle mumbled.

-

Sharpe found a Defence Force speeder for them to drive home. They were quiet on the way, but Needle’s hand rested over Sharpe’s on the gear shift.

“Are you finally going to stay over or what else does it take?” Needle asked provocatively, when Sharpe had climbed out of the speeder with him to walk him to the door of the flat old apartment building he lived in.

“You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to. I’m really going to want to fuck you in the morning, too, though, so... is that on the table?” Sharpe joked.

Needle rolled his eyes at him as he pulled him in by the elbow while he punched in the code at the door.

“Depends on how you play your cards,” he mocked.

They walked up the stairs. Needle felt a dull pain all over, but with modern technology, wounds like his would be all healed up in a couple of days and he knew the skin had already closed again.

Once inside his apartment, they took a shower together to wash off the dust and disinfectant. Sharpe stood behind him, forehead leaning between Needle’s shoulder blades, and cleaned his wings. He’d gotten pretty good at that. Needle didn’t usually let people even touch them, but Sharpe had asked him roughly a hundred times and had always been careful enough when Needle let him, so by this point he’d gotten used to it. He’d gotten used to a lot around Sharpe.

When he watched him as they dried themselves with rough towels, saw the blooming bruises on Sharpe’s skin, he was reminded that they both could have walked away from that situation with much worse than what they’d gotten, or might not have walked away from it at all. He wrapped an arm around Sharpe’s shoulders, pressed his shorter form to his side as he led the way to the bedroom.

“What a night,” Sharpe said, falling on the bed.

“Yeah.” Needle sank down next to him. “You did get that free day that you wanted, though.”

Sharpe chuckled. “Guess so. Got the boyfriend I wanted, too.”

“Did you now? Did we make that official?”

Needle gave him a fanged smile as he laid down next to him on his side, stretching out his long limbs, letting his wings shake off the damp. He felt giddy, maybe from the drugs or the butterflies in his stomach.

“I’ll beg on my knees if you want me to? Or whatever other massively embarrassing thing you can think of. I owe you big time.”

“Maybe I’ll have an idea when I’m not so exhausted. For now, I guess you can be my boyfriend,” Needle said.

Sharpe grinned at him. He was generally a happy guy. It was one of the first things Needle had liked about him, and whenever he was down like he’d been in the hospital, it made Needle feel uncomfortable, too. Thankfully, Sharpe looked ecstatic now. Needle kissed him, despite the ache in his face, and maybe it was the adrenaline that made him hook his leg over Sharpe’s side and press against him, but he wanted him right that moment.

Sharpe was eager to play along, holding him close and moving down to kiss his throat, but as Needle grew hard against him, he looked up.

“You wanna see this through? Because you just got fucked up pretty good in the not-fun way.”

“Thank heavens for modern medicine,” Needle said dryly. “Pain killers haven’t fully worn off, so let’s make the most of it.”

“Imagine that, you being even hornier than me for once.”

Needle made a face at the suggestion and Sharpe laughed. He pushed off a little and lifted his finger, silently telling Needle to wait, as he rolled over to the nightstand and grabbed one of the condoms scattered there. Then, he moved downwards.

“I’ll blow you,” he said.

Needle frowned. “I can’t help you there.”

“Well, good thing I said I was going to do it. You like it, right?”

Needle remained silent for a moment. He’d stopped receiving that sort of favour ever since, ten years ago, in a very short-lived relationship, his boyfriend had accused him of selfishness for letting him give head when Needle, with his mouth full of dagger teeth, could not. He’d decided he should focus on things he could reciprocate, if only not to give people who already had to ignore so much to be with him more ammunition. Some years later, he’d figured that sleeping with others was too much trouble altogether, the knowledge of being tolerated rather than wanted bruising his ego. Then he’d met Sharpe – and Sharpe had never not wanted him.

It was the first time Sharpe had pushed this point, though he’d joked about it often enough. If he was to be his boyfriend, perhaps Needle had to give him the benefit of the doubt that he wouldn’t turn a favour against him.

“Okay,” he said. “Sure.”

Sharpe ducked his head with a triumphant smile.

It felt fucking great still when Sharpe sucked the head of his cock, Needle had to allow that. It was a shame he could not do the same for him. However, he let go off the thought when Sharpe draped the condom over him and enthusiastically swallowed him down. Needle angled his thigh to let Sharpe’s searching hand between his legs. Sharpe spread it out, thumbing between the folds of his pussy and gently probing his ass at the same time.

Needle knew he wouldn’t last, not after the evening he’d had, with his blood still pounding in his ears, feeling a hot mouth around him like he hadn’t for a decade. He grasped at his naked shoulders, tugged his hair, moaned out loud.

Sharpe had no restraint. Spit ran down the length of Needle’s cock as he bobbed his head up and down, and he took him into his throat even as it evidently made him gag a little. Needle felt his toes curl, his wings flutter against the blanket, and when he came and his muscles grew tight, they tore angrily at his wounded flesh and skin, and yet the release was sweet.

Sharpe pulled away only when Needle was fully soft. He looked pleased.

“See, I’m right,” he murmured, pulling the condom off.

“Sometimes,” Needle corrected breathlessly.

He sat up and crawled down the bed, urging Sharpe on his back. A wild thought had entered his head: Sharpe had gotten hard and he’d never been scared of his teeth when kissing – maybe Needle could at least do a little bit. Sharpe was watching Needle with great interest as he sat down over Sharpe’s shins and wrapped his hand around the base of his cock, the other cradling Sharpe’s balls. He folded his long body over, then, and carefully wrapped his lips around the tip of Sharpe’s cock, keeping his teeth pressed together so they wouldn’t graze him.

“Oh God, yes,” Sharpe muttered.

It was a lot less impressive than what Sharpe had managed, but at least he could kiss his cock while he stroked him off. Looking up, there wasn’t a hint of worry on Sharpe’s face; he was simply watching with wide eyes. 

The reaction emboldened him. He leaned his head to the side and stuck out his tongue. It was a deep red, a little longer than that of a human, and pointed at the end. He wondered if he looked stupid, licking Sharpe’s dick like a lollipop, but Sharpe gave a groan and pressed his hand tothe back of his neck, letting his hips push up into his hand. Usually, Needle could tell when Sharpe was about to come, but this time it seemed to catch them both off-guard as he suddenly spent himself over Needle’s face.

“You don’t mind the fangs, I take it?” Needle asked, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.

Sharpe laughed.

“No more than your knife. I doubt you’ll use either on me.”

That made sense, Needle supposed. He wasn’t a madman nor an idiot. Why wouldn’t Sharpe trust in him that much? Still, it made him feel lighter.

While Sharpe laid back, Needle went to wash his face. When he returned, Sharpe stretched out his arm, looking excited to have Needle climb in bed with him just for an embrace.

“I do love you, too,” Needle said.

Somehow, he’d skipped over that. It had felt like Sharpe should already know because Needle had been so painfully aware of it for a while, but by the way his eyes lit up, maybe he hadn’t.

“I think today has proven I’m the luckiest bastard alive,” Sharpe decided.


End file.
